Allison Geyer
Ice cream creations as pretty as they are sweet.
The frigid depths of a Wisconsin winter might not seem like the ideal time to open an ice cream shop, but business appears to be booming at Rollicious Creamery, which began serving at 330 State Street in December. On a recent Friday afternoon, a few groups of college-aged women braved snowy streets to try the shop’s signature treat, rolled ice cream.
“People don’t seem to care [about the cold weather],” says Philip Kasubaski, who co-owns Rollicious with his wife, Indri. The Mt. Horeb couple owns a second location in Wauwatosa, which they opened in June of 2017 after discovering rolled ice cream while traveling in Indonesia and Japan a few years ago. “We thought this would be a good product to introduce,” Kasubaski says.
Also called Thai rolled ice cream or stir-fried ice cream, the treat is made by pouring milk-based liquid onto a metal pan chilled below freezing. The ice cream chef can add flavors like fruit or chocolate while manipulating the mixture with spatula-like paddles to create a thin layer of ice cream. Once it hardens, the base is scraped into cylindrical curls that are placed in a dish and topped with extras like whipped cream, fruit or candy.
Rollicious also offers Hong Kong-style bubble waffles, another popular Asian street food dessert. Also known as egg waffles, they’re softer and fluffier than Western-style waffles and feature a distinctive spherical pattern instead of square divots. Rollicious bubble waffles are made to order and served with a scoop of ice cream and choice of toppings. Kasubaski hopes the waffles will prove as popular as the rolled ice cream. “Nobody else in town is doing waffles like this,” he says.
As aesthetically pleasing as they are tasty, Rollicious treats often end up on Instagram, Kasubaski says.
“It’s great,” he says. “Everybody’s advertising for me.”
